


With No Motive of Greed

by patternofdefiance



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Bottom!Sherlock, D/s themes, Emotions, Explicit Consent, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Misunderstandings, PWP, Porn, Relationship Discussions, Smut, Three Continents Watson, bdsm (light), intense fluff (is that a thing? can it be a thing?), top!John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 03:45:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patternofdefiance/pseuds/patternofdefiance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time is simple – or as simple as giving into carnal impulse concerning your flatmate (and best friend) can be.</p><p> </p><p>"There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority."</p><p>--Charles Kuralt</p>
            </blockquote>





	With No Motive of Greed

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd by the flawless [tiltedsyllogism](../../../users/tiltedsyllogism/pseuds/tiltedsyllogism) .  
> Thank you also to the good folks of the Antidiogenes Club for their companionship and tireless encouragement.

The first time is simple – or as simple as giving into carnal impulse concerning your flatmate (and best friend) can be.

It’s the (distantly) familiar push and pull, press of skin, slick of sweat, the arch and tilt of spine and neck. It’s a rhythm, which means it’s a frequency, which means it’s a wave form function cresting again, and again, and again – unchanging, predictable – but _no,_ somehow –

It’s a _crescendo_ (two of them, actually) and Sherlock lies dazed in the after-shine of his, perplexed that it happened at all. John relinquishes his grip and rolls over, off, with a huff and a laugh bordering on a breathless giggle, and Sherlock traces the outlines of the marks left by the doctor’s fingers, blinking through the unfamiliar glow.

Even stranger is the fact that twenty hours later, it happens again.

 

*

 

Two weeks in, John escalates.

He is kissing Sherlock by the flat’s entry door, both already half undressed, when John’s hands grow bold and his mouth turns possessive. Sherlock is flat on his back on the sofa before he thinks to protest this shift in dynamic.

“John,” he says, aiming for ‘commanding’ and falling miserably short, “what –” _do you think you’re doing?_ – that’s what he was going to say, was going to demand, before John Watson’s full weight settles against him, on top of him, settling _him_ , hot and heavy and sure.

Sherlock’s breath catches in his throat, and that feels somehow exhilarating and calming all at once. “Oh,” he manages. If it exits his mouth as a whine, well, at least John is groaning fit to cover the sound of it.

“That’s a new one for you,” John murmurs into his neck.

Sherlock flushes. Apparently John did hear. He tries to stifle another keening groan as John moves, hips rocking against Sherlock’s, seeking friction, shifting skin. John’s hipbones bump up against Sherlock’s own sharp angles insistently, and at first the not-quite-pain is a distraction from the main focus.

Then, quite suddenly, it _isn’t_.

Sherlock chokes back a whimper as the almost bruising force of John’s thrusts hangs, opalescent and glowing in his mind’s eye, settling into his nerves as heat, enhancing instead of detracting. He finds his own hips jerking upwards in response, harsh, seeking more crushing contact, and when Sherlock comes, it’s with John’s tongue in his mouth.

 

*

 

“Stop this,” Sherlock snarls, and John’s eyes shutter.

“Stop what, exactly?”

Silence descends on the crime scene as every person in the room turns to stare.

“Stop _coddling_ me,” Sherlock all but spits, each word clipped, and he’s yanking his elbow from John’s grip.

John takes a deep breath as if he’s the one putting up with intolerable displays of sentiment. “Alright,” he grits out, cheeks reddening from a roomful of scrutiny, “next time I’ll let you fall face first into evidence from fatigue.”

Sherlock glares daggers – no, _scalpels_ – at John as he marches stiffly away, then proceeds to explain to Anderson exactly how much oxygen he has wasted by existing up until this very moment.

 

“I’m upset with you,” John says later, breathless with the force of Sherlock’s assault – hands and hands and hands –

“Good,” Sherlock bites out, then bites a kiss into John’s mouth, “because I am _livid_ with you.”

“Well, as long as this thing is _mutual_.” And then John captures Sherlock’s hands and his mouth and his attention and –

Sherlock _hates_ how effortless this is for John.

 

*

 

They have quiet afternoons, too, tucked in between corpses and chases and this strange new way of being together, being them. It galls Sherlock to realize he’s built up a backlog of memories of unremarkable moments, useless details piling up where he’d normally discard or compress them down to salient points and pertinent factoids.

He spends the better part of yet another quiet day (a Tuesday, two days post-case) sorting through them, trying to determine which to condense and which to bin, and finds to his horror that they date back to the very beginning.

He intends to purge as many mundane, domestic days as possible, especially since none of them are required for him to function optimally. He could, quite frankly, delete every aspect of his cohabitation with John Watson and deduce the necessary from a single encounter with the man.

He intends to purge, but instead Sherlock spends that unremarkable Tuesday in its entirety re-watching the flicker film of his memories. They play in the darkness behind his eyelids, and when he finishes, blinking his eyes open, John has taken a seat, has taken Sherlock’s feet into his lap and is reading. The television is on in the background. Rain is falling, a fire has lived and died in the grate, and it all comes together to clutch at Sherlock’s throat.

It feels like panic (it should feel like panic) but it’s sweeter, and Sherlock swallows through it before he feels confident that his voice won’t waver as he demands tea.

John smiles at him as if he said something completely different. Sherlock doesn’t delete a single memory.

 

*

 

Sherlock’s muscles ache as he lingers on the sofa, flat on his back, his blue silk gown a thin barrier between his sweaty back and the leather.

John left for work twenty minutes ago – showered and presentable and grinning – but before he left, he stopped by the sofa, stooped, and laid a simple kiss against Sherlock’s temple. Sherlock had been planning on productivity today – Lestrade has been dragging his feet on including Sherlock in his latest quandary, and there is a plate of fascia samples from different walks of life to analyze – but then _that_ had happened.

Sweat cools unpleasantly on his chest and the crease where his chin tips forward against his throat.

John Watson has a much wider array of experiences, a deeper pool of data, to plot his trajectories from, from which to execute his maneuvers – but this kiss had not felt calculated.

 

*                                                                                                                                                           

 

Another quiet afternoon, and this is one too many.

“It’s a factor in your arousal, isn’t it? Manipulating me – _controlling_ me. What is it? Is it the thought of dominating me? Subjugating me?” Sherlock’s sneer is an ugly twist that lingers bitter on his lips. Through the eye piece of his microscope, Sherlock watches cell wall damage spread, a darkening necrosis. He looks up though, just moving his eyes, to observe the effect of his words on their intended recipient.

John stills, freezes really, his back still turned to Sherlock as he stands at the sink sanitizing mugs, and Sherlock has a clear view of John’s entire reaction process via his shoulder muscles: the twitch of surprise, the clench of guilt, but then the shift of _re-consideration_ , until it isn’t unexpected that John relaxes, laughs hollowly, a touch of reciprocal bitter in his throat as he says without turning, “There’s always something.”

 

*

 

It doesn’t take John long to figure it out.

He has Sherlock flat on his back on the sofa, consummate neutral ground that it is, and his heat is drenching Sherlock in great floods of sensation, washing Sherlock’s mind further out to sea, until he’s writhing, almost moaning, letting everything show just a little more, because it’s _irresistible_. His hands come up to clench at John’s shoulders, but then the white hot iron of John’s fingers wraps around his wrists, and his hands are buoyed up and up, above his head –

He’s _pinned_ there, immobilized between the stretch of his limbs and the sure weight, the steady press of John grinding down against him. A sob chokes its way out of his mouth, and being trapped, being held, being _taken_ removes some horrible film of residue from the lens of his nervous system, because suddenly everything is brighter and sharper and _more_.

“Oh god,” Sherlock manages.

“Look at you,” John murmurs into the skin beneath his ear. “Look at you, oh, _look_ at you,” he repeats, and he thrusts against Sherlock’s trembling, arched body, and Sherlock can only gasp and shiver.

“Oh _god_ –!”

“There you are,” John says, almost reverent, and then gentles him through his orgasm. “There, shhh,” and Sherlock would recoil from that gentleness but his hands are still held tight above his head (and thank god for that, because how long would John stay if he knew Sherlock cringed from this offering?) and he’s having trouble calming his pulse, never mind orchestrating an escape.

John rocks against him as he shudders with sensitivity, movements made slick with Sherlock’s ejaculate, and then John is a sweaty, hot, smothering weight as he collapses, spent, against Sherlock’s chest.

It should be intolerable. The fact that it isn’t is terrifying.

Sherlock closes his eyes before the sting in their corners can become something undeletable.

 

*

 

Sherlock pushes plates of food away, dumps paper cups of coffee down the gutter, ignores advice about umbrellas.

At crime scenes he tries to put John (always nearby, always watching, always there in case) out of his mind. He spends a disproportionate amount of time trying not to think about the doctor(’s hands, mouth, skin), sometimes has to turn his back from John(’s face, lips, eyes) to keep from lashing out or giving in – at what, to what he doesn’t know.

It’s _maddening_.

 

*

 

John is calm (and oh, how Sherlock wants to _rattle_ that calm) as he says, “I don’t want to _make_ you do anything, Sherlock. That’s really not me. That’s not _us_ , either.” John’s hands are steady and strong, his touches firm and familiar. “What I want,” and his whole body shifts against Sherlock, “is for you to let me –” another roll of sensation, “– let me give you what you need.”

The clatter and fire of those words leaves Sherlock shaking, risk and the roots of terror crowding behind such innocuous words. John is asking such a simple thing, a thing Sherlock has never considered or allowed before – except in his own, quiet way, this plain, quiet man has been doing just that all along.

Tea and compliments.

“Whatever that might be,” John adds, as if he can see Sherlock’s thoughts. How disconcerting, this reversal, and yet –

Sherlock shudders and nods, his eyes squeezed shut. His muscles are rigid under John’s touches, those fingertips not aggressive, not insistent – but, thank god, also not _tentative_ or _hesitant_. Sherlock doesn’t think he could stand that.

This time is like the first time, simple – or as simple as peeling away the layers of carnal pretense can be by saying ‘yes.’

 

*

 

“No,” Sherlock hisses.

“What?” John asks, and his face would be funny if Sherlock wasn’t in a state and close to hysteria. _Unthinkable_ , but there it is.

“Just _no_ , just – stop –”

“Sherlock, it’s only _tea_.” He’s standing, close – too close – to Sherlock, one hand held out to him with a paper cup.

“I don’t need you _minding_ me.” _I don’t need you_. The sentence sticks in his throat, but he can’t get it out, and he’s choking on it, on his rage, on the vile something that’s generating both those sentiments.

The kindness, the concern, the confusion in John’s eyes – Sherlock can’t take it anymore, and he turns and strides away, leaving John holding two cups of lukewarm tea in front of the still-steaming corpse.

 

“Hey,” John says after two days of silence and distance. During those two days, Sherlock had felt like himself again (almost), could think and view and observe what happened around him without reams and reams of data about John clogging everything up.

He had hated every moment.

He could see but not connect, as if John was – _is_ some sort of integral element in the circuitry of his thought.

Sherlock grunts at John in acknowledgement.

“You scared me, you know,” John continues, and those words are not heavy in reproach, are laden instead with fondness, and Sherlock sighs to hear them, the ache in his chest changing gears.

“You could always leave,” he says.

“That’s twice you’ve been wrong about me now,” John notes before moving into the kitchen to start tea.

That afternoon, John bends Sherlock over the arm of the sofa, and when Sherlock comes, it’s with his wrists pinned up in a prisoner hold, almost against his shoulder blades.

 

*

 

It takes Sherlock much longer to figure it out.

Sherlock has seen John on dates, sweet and flirting and charming – and Sherlock hated it, seeing John wear that skin. He’s been expecting that spun-sugar mask to make an appearance for weeks now, growing more and more intolerant of John’s consideration, fearing that around each thoughtful gesture lurked the beginnings of a saccharine courtship, wherein Sherlock would be no more than the other half of an insipid equation, a duet he’s seen played out, by John no less, again, and again, and never to a satisfactory ending.

But no.

John has had many partners, but that does not mean he’s acted out his _sentiment_ with them in this precise manner. John has a method, but it varies from recipient to recipient because everyone needs something different – and fulfilling that need is _John’s_ need.

Because John is – unwaveringly – considerate. _Attentive_. John’s entire being focused on Sherlock, his everything turning _phototropic_ to follow Sherlock’s trajectory.

The thought that Sherlock’s own needs are driving John’s actions, motivating John’s behavior, perhaps fulfilling John’s needs comes as a shock, sudden and electric, and for a moment, Sherlock is trapped in the aftermath, a mote of dust suspended in a column of light.

 

*

 

John stands close to him at the crime scene. Close enough to offer an opinion if called for. Close enough to hold gloves or scarf if necessary. Close enough to be a hand up from a crouch. Close enough to subtly still Sherlock’s swaying. Close enough to murmur advice. Close enough to exclaim praise. Close enough that if Sherlock would tolerate it, that hand on his elbow would be a hand on the small of his back.

 

*

 

“I am your motive,” Sherlock says to John, as he crosses the threshold into John’s room.

“For what?” John murmurs, his eyes still scanning a journal. “Murder?” He looks up then, eyes lively. Within a moment of seeing Sherlock’s face, those eyes darken from mirth to something dangerous. “Could very well be,” he murmurs once more, and again, this time his subdued vocalizations are tinted with a harsher focus.

A thrill runs down Sherlock’s spine, only to shiver up again, a crackle of sensation along the ends of his nerves as well as a deepening pool of heat inside the cradle of his pelvis.

John offers a kiss with the upwards tilt of his head, and Sherlock stoops to accept. After a moment, John deepens it, dips tongue in to taste at Sherlock’s mouth turned soft and pliant, then pulls away. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Not your strongest suit.”

John rolls his eyes at him, a blatant imitation-turned-teasing, and Sherlock feels an answering twitch in the corners of his mouth. He looks away before it can blossom into something noticeable.

“Did you want to hear what I was thinking about, or did you want to keep insulting me?”

“I’m quite good at multitasking.” This is new, too, since John, repartee for its own sake and not for points. Sherlock always gets a sense of weightlessness during these little _tête-à-têtes_ , like a seven percent solution of dizziness.

“You’re brilliant, Sherlock, absolutely brilliant, but you are absolute shite at communication. So, let’s keep this simple. I’ve been trying to respect your boundaries, but I get the idea that’s not what you want.”

Sherlock jerks in surprise, then regards John warily. He’d been expecting to sidle up to this, not blunder straight into it. He’d never been privy (despite at least two solid attempts) to John’s more intimate conversations with previous sexual prospects – but he’d assumed, given his usual courtship _modus_ _operandi_ , that any heavy conversations would have been approached with the caution afforded most poisonous animals.

“My boundaries?” Sherlock rolls the words around in his mouth, in his mind, not intending to imitate John’s usual method of repeating everything in question format, but – well. There it is. Sherlock grimaces.

“Yes,” John says with a decisive nod. “Yours.” He flushes just a little. “I think we’ve already established I’m up for just about anything.” His expression turns serious. “You, however, are sending mixed signals.”

“Me?” Repetition, yet again. Sherlock frowns. “I’m certainly not. If anyone, it’s you –” Sherlock cuts himself off, because it feels raw and wrong and he can’t quite bring himself to say it to John, who is everything right about the world most of the time.

“Am I hurting you?” John asks.

Sherlock sighs. “Hardly.”

In the silence that follows, the fall of snow against the window pane is a soft, slow, silver chime.

“Oh,” John says, and Sherlock wonders if this is what he sounds and looks like to other people, the spectators that have watched him from a distance his whole life. A distance of his own devising, mostly, but still. “So,” John breathes, “less of this –” he trails his fingertips gently along Sherlock’s neck, then he switches his hand around to grip into the meat of Sherlock’s neck, “– and more of this.” His grip tightens, sudden, harsh, a thick pinch, unrelenting, and for one split second every bit of steel leaves Sherlock’s body.

John lets go in alarm and steadies Sherlock before he can pitch sideways from surprise and stimulus. “Are you alright?” he asks, and Sherlock jerks back from contact, from the words, every muscle clenched.

“I don’t need this,” he snarls, turns to depart, but John’s quiet voice stills him:

“I rather think you do.”

Sherlock hesitates at the door.

“Do you trust me?”

Sherlock doesn’t move, but considers instead, behind closed eyes.

“I want to try something, Sherlock.” John’s voice, so close behind him, should startle him, should make him jump and tense further, but his body’s betrayal is in the calm that washes through each strand of muscle, each bundle of nerves. Sherlock breathes in and holds that lungful a fraction longer than necessary, because John is in that air.

Irrational.

“I want you to _let_ me.”

Sherlock exhales and immediately pulls in another lungful of saturated air.

“I’ve been trying to be careful with this – with you, but that doesn’t work for you, and if it doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work for me.” The words are simple and the tone is steel and Sherlock can feel himself bracing against the drop of their final meaning, trepidation layering in with anticipation.

“So,” John says, in a voice that pulls the trigger, “let’s go down to your bed so that I can take you apart. So I can tie you up. So I can leave some marks.”

Sherlock’s mouth is dry, but his forehead is damp. John’s words are dizzying.

“If you agree to this, go downstairs and wait, on your bed, ready for me.”

“You –” Sherlock stops himself. He traps another breath behind his teeth, and then he leaves John’s bedroom.

Sherlock is standing by the bed when John arrives a few moments later. “I’m not doing all the work,” Sherlock says, and if anyone cares to call his tone petulant, well.

“Oh?” John says. He tilts his head, considering. “Take off your jacket.”

“No.”

“Sherlock.”

“Make me.” Sherlock takes cool pride in that his voice does not sound as pleading as it could, but he isn’t quite prepared for John’s reaction – partly because he’s caught up on the inanity of his quipped reply, and partly because he never expected John to move quite so – quite _so_.

Sure strides, more like the loping paces of a wolf, carry John right into Sherlock’s space. He expects a kiss; previous encounters have taught him to expect sure, thorough presses of hands.

What he does not expect is the doctor’s hand to rise up and grasp him by the throat. There’s only a hint of pressure, but the promise is enough to buckle Sherlock’s knees, and then he’s toppling backwards onto the mattress, John a heavy heat beyond the flimsy barrier of clothes.

John’s right hand fists in Sherlock’s hair while John’s left hand rests possessively at his throat.

Sherlock thrashes against John, against his hold, but John refuses to let go. The more Sherlock thrashes, the harder John presses down, the tighter his fingers wind into his curls, and Sherlock bites his lip to keep from uttering the small noises of pleasure crowding in his throat.

“Hold still,” John growls, one hand slipping down to Sherlock’s trousers’ closure.

Sherlock bucks up and nearly unseats John, a fierce curl of pleasure flaring through him at the blatant disobedience. A moment later, it is eclipsed, swamped by sheer want as John levels a heated, stern gaze at him as he leans forward, aggressive.

 “I want you,” John breathes into his mouth, “ _ready_.”

When Sherlock freezes under the onslaught of conflicting thoughts, trapped between wanting to thrash and snarl and a marrow-deep desire to let go and free fall into some profound and distant depth, to abdicate control – when he hitches in breath, John looms above him and says, “Undress,” and Sherlock’s limbs jerk from their resistance and comply.

He jostles John’s hold once or twice, and if he’d wanted to, he could have broken free. But he doesn’t want to, and that thought makes him shut his eyes. John does, however, strategically let go of Sherlock so that shirt and trousers may depart – but if one hand leaves, the other presses firmly against sun-shy flesh, tan against pale.

At last, Sherlock is naked, a tight arch of skin and bones and muscle under the clothed press of John’s body. John trails his fingers lightly against Sherlock’s throat, and Sherlock is about to rage at the disregard in that gentleness, but then John brings his other hand up to apply the same treatment to Sherlock’s nipples, the backs of his fingers and nails scraping lightly before the thumb arrives to swipe again and again, the touch turning rough, abrasive. Sherlock swallows the sounds trying to escape his mouth as each touch stokes glow after glow after _glow_ into his flesh.

John doesn’t seem to tire of it, his eyes roaming over Sherlock’s face and form, as if some new secret is revealed each time Sherlock stifles a sound, as if each brush of fingertips writes meaning into friction.

“Do you want me to stop?” John asks softly after a time, and there’s a pressure and a haze muffling Sherlock’s mouth and throat and mind, and all he can do is shake his head. John watches him with somber eyes.

Sherlock finds he wants to touch and stroke the body above his own, and he lifts his hands with some difficulty to do just that. No sooner has he made contact, has he started to worm his fingers through shirt and vest, than he hears:

“Give me your hands.”

The authoritative tone brooks no argument, leaves no loophole – and Sherlock is less surprised and more grateful when his hands lift to comply. Sherlock struggles with his limbs, lifting them through leaden air, and each breath he takes settles into his body like ballast.

John takes Sherlock’s wrists into the cups of his palms, the curls of his fingers, and he runs his thumbs along the delicate skin that covers tendons and veins, articulation and life in a vulnerable swivel of engineering. He runs his thumbs along that almost translucent skin until it feels raw, until even air chafes as it moves across, and Sherlock is biting his lip to keep from making sound.

“Sherlock,” John murmurs, and then he looks up from the wrists in his charge, looks up and Sherlock finds he cannot look anywhere but at John as he asks, “do you trust me?”

Sherlock’s lips part, and saying ‘no’ would simplify everything, simplify _them_ , reset them, pull them back from this brink, but that’s not the word in Sherlock’s mouth, the only word he has left for the man holding him down in the storm of the world. Sherlock’s lips part, and “Yes,” slips out like a thief in the night, stealing itself, stealing Sherlock, and delivering both into the hands gripping his wrists.

A brush of lips burns against the reddened skin of Sherlock’s left wrist, and then smooth coolness coils around it, binding the memory of that touch into place. Rope – and it takes Sherlock a moment longer than expected to register that John must have had it tucked in the back of his jeans. It’s tenting nylon, Sherlock realizes, from John’s army bag.

Oh, and that thought’s worth a shiver.

Strong hands guide him onto his side, and then both wrists are bound together neatly, snugly. Even small testing movements cause the rope to slide against the sensitized skin, and Sherlock’s hands relax into the light buzz of that sensation.

Tied like this, vulnerable to the adjustments John is making – pushing him onto his back again so the his arms are awkwardly between his spine and his bed, arranging pillows behind his neck and head and under his hips, pushing his legs apart – Sherlock feels himself begin to harden in earnest. A warm flush has already laid claim to his cheeks, but now it creeps lower, staking out territory on his throat and chest. Sherlock’s already peaked nipples pinch even tighter as John sweeps his hands up and down his abdomen and chest, traveling higher and lower each time, until he’s stroking Sherlock’s cock on the down-swing and the soft skin just beneath his chin on the up.

One hand disappears, and it takes hearing the closing _click_ of a plastic cap for Sherlock to catch on to what is coming next.

John’s finger circles once, twice, and then nudges inside. Sherlock clenches in surprise, and John allows him a moment to compose himself before sliding all the way in, his movement insistent, unrelenting. The stretch glitters along the edge of Sherlock’s awareness, sparks of intensity blurring into the oddness of penetration.

The second finger makes Sherlock gasp, head tossing back, fingers curling and uncurling uselessly beneath the curve of his spine. John leans up, regards him with tilted head and says, almost conversationally, “Would you like to try to get away? Do you want to struggle against this?” He punctuates with a deeper thrust of his two fingers. “You can, if you want to. But I’m going to keep fucking you with my fingers while you do.”

Mouth open, Sherlock stares up at John, caught in a vice of shocked disbelief and actual, _painful_ arousal, and wonders distantly if this is how others feel when he reads them and exposes things no one knew, things they did not even know about themselves.

John adds a third finger and Sherlock falls apart, every hold on his composure and control cracking and breaking away, and by the time he realizes, it’s too late, and his hips are already shifting, and he’s not sure if he’s struggling against John’s hold or rutting up against empty air or fucking himself down onto John’s fingers, each movement of his spine chafing his wrists and back against rope, and there’s a pitiful keening escaping his throat, but it’s alright, maybe, because John is fixated, perplexingly rapt, upon Sherlock’s face.

“John –” he manages.

“Yes?” he asks, somehow mellow as he buries his fingers deeper than before, and Sherlock nearly chokes on air.

The only sour note is John stroking calmness into his skin – thighs, stomach, sternum – a final offer for Sherlock to take or reject, and Sherlock realizes through the daze of sensation that John won’t mind, doesn’t actually care whichever Sherlock chooses. John simply wants him to make a decision. “No more of this,” Sherlock says, and he means the gentleness, the safely soft touches, feather-light caresses. He nods his head at John’s carefully resting hand. “I want –”

John understands, somehow, or Sherlock thinks he must, because in the next instant his hand is in Sherlock’s hair, fingers tightening around a fistful of curls. His other hand pulls away from between Sherlock’s legs, fingers slipping out suddenly, only to take a handful of buttock and _squeeze_.

The squeeze quickly becomes a crush, and then Sherlock is an arching strand of electricity between two grounding points of pain. He’s distantly aware that he’s struggling again, and just as distantly aware that John is having none of it, is leaning forward, pinning him, putting teeth to flesh to flesh to flesh –

John’s mouth bruises the crook of Sherlock’s neck and Sherlock shudders and goes limp. John’s teeth clamp down even harder in response, and Sherlock can barely breathe, chest hitching up, up, up in tiny inhalations, and he can hardly see for all the tactile sensory data overwhelming him.

Sherlock closes his eyes. He didn’t know it could be like this.

John’s hands disappear, and Sherlock wonders if that’s it, if John’s done – but no. Rustling and soft thumps, and then hot skin, flushed and damp, is pressing against his.

Tied like this, there’s no resisting when John lifts Sherlock’s legs up onto his shoulders, lifting the weight of his lower back off his bound wrists.

There’s another _click_ and then freshly slick, cool fingers are pushing without preamble into Sherlock once more, and with each thrust John’s hips shift a little, and Sherlock can feel John’s cock bump against his arse in time with those little movements.

“You’re ready,” John says, and it isn’t a question, and those fingers slide out once more, and Sherlock feels the referred motion of them slicking John’s cock once, twice, efficient and thorough as the man above him, and then –

“ _Oh_ ,” Sherlock breathes, because John has pushed in all the way, insistent and irresistible. His body tightens in surprise, but it’s a feeble attempt at expulsion, too late and too weak to accomplish much.

John gives a testing thrust, shallow and careful, and Sherlock decides he won’t have it, this hateful tarnish of caution. He decides to take control, and with every last ounce of fight, he pushes down and back against John’s presence, nearly managing to upset their position –

John’s surprise is a sharp exhale, but he keeps his balance and growls, “Oh no you _don’t_.”

Hard fingers curl into the large muscles of Sherlock’s right thigh while another iron grip claims his left hip, immobilizing him, and then John is shoving into him again and again, chasing the breath from his body, the thoughts from his mind. Each movement is slick and rough, a dizzying dichotomy, and Sherlock finds he’s writhing in the inescapable cage of touch and sensation.

Abruptly John stops, his cock pulled almost all the way out. Sherlock keens before he can stop himself, but each attempt he makes to seek stimulus is foiled by John’s steady hands, even as his marred chest heaves with breath.

“Look at me.”

Sherlock opens his eyes, not sure when they fell closed, and blinks up at John.

John lunges forward to push their mouths together, burying himself inside Sherlock, and Sherlock feels his muscles clench, fights not to orgasm as John takes his mouth with his own.

“What you said before,” John rasps against his lips, “if you’re asking, then yes.” John smears a thumb across Sherlock’s flushed and fever hot lips. “You’re the reason behind pretty much everything I do – and feel.”

Sherlock bites into John’s shoulder, desperate to keep from letting his own words tumble out and ruin everything, and surely John is expecting some sort of verbal reciprocation, surely there will be consequences for not speaking now –

But John simply heaves himself back upright, wraps his arms around Sherlock’s thighs, controlling them, and begins to thrust into Sherlock again, holding him still and fucking into him again and again, as if he hadn’t broken his rhythm earlier.

“You’re _my_ reason,” John growls, and it sounds like ownership, like claiming, and _oh._

Sherlock thrashes against the restraints at his wrists, his thighs, feels those words rush into the cavern of his head, fill his ears, smother his breathing, dissolve the restraint in his throat, and suddenly his voice is pouring out, whines and whimpers and graceless moans, “John, _John_ ,” interloper, invader, inside him, inside –

“Come for me,” John commands, and Sherlock’s body snaps up to meet John’s, rigid.

Two thrusts later, and Sherlock comes undone, eyes clamped shut, mouth open, head lolling to the side as his muscles lose their fight, and John keeps pounding into him, fucking him through the crushing tide and overwhelming waves of his body’s release, holds him tight and as he goes limp. Finally, the animal jerking of his hips nearly matching the rhythm of Sherlock’s frenzied heartbeat, John stills as he comes, buried deep inside Sherlock, the nerve endings there over-sensitized and the muscles fluttering.

Sherlock doesn’t realize he’s covered in his own ejaculate until it starts to cool.

His body shakes as John eases out, as John arranges him on his side in recovery, as John leaves the bed only to return with a warm washcloth. John wipes him clean – face, chest, and arse – and then lies down in front of him. He still doesn’t untie him, but he does weave his limbs into Sherlock’s own quivering ones.

Slowly, neurotransmitter activity dies down, oxygen saturation normalizes, and Sherlock feels like he can will his muscles to move and expect results accordingly.

He opens his eyes to see John watching him, and where his touches have lost their caution, it sits now in the doctor’s eyes. Sherlock hates it, seated there, even more.

“John,” he murmurs, lips clumsy, so he simply tips his head forward and pushes his mouth against John’s, the thin line of John’s mouth firm under Sherlock’s ravaged lips. He hesitates when John’s hands shift position, fearing that after all that they done together, he’s managed now to misstep – but then John’s fingers twine into his hair and the other hand rests at Sherlock’s throat, and he knows they understand one another.

 

*

 

Sherlock doesn’t expect it to get any easier, but it does.

John’s chivalry isn’t a prelude to departure or a design for distance, and Sherlock can relax under the offerings, the guiding touches, the casual and the tender. It helps that John cuts down on the number of such shows of – of – sentiment.

For his part, Sherlock finds himself reciprocating, albeit rarely, his fingers finding ways onto John’s skin – elbows at bed time, wrists on the chase, the curves of his index fingers when he accepts a mug of tea.

It isn’t balance, yet, and it isn’t harmony, but the understanding lingers, layers, and redefines – and that, too, is more than Sherlock expected.


End file.
